Without Fear or Favor: the Heresies and Vindications of Anthony Lewis, 1927 to 2013

Anthony
Lewis, the former New York Times
reporter and columnist who died Monday, March 25, at the age of 85, shaped the
American conscience on a broad range of issues, from civil liberties and civil
rights to war and diplomacy, for almost 50 years. During his long career, Lewis
won numerous awards and published several important books. Unlike many men of
his generation who rose to high positions in journalism, he was a charming and
thoughtful man who could listen as intently as he talked.

In
our era of declining daily newspapers and fragmented, narrowly targeted media,
not even a journalist as talented as Lewis could likely wield the kind of
influence he once exerted. More than any other reporter, he fostered public
understanding of the judicial system, particularly the Supreme Court—and of
major court decisions during the past half-century that protect individual
rights. He helped the country to break with musty orthodoxies and rigid
prejudices that had long prevented the fulfillment of liberty for all
Americans. He guided the nation's conception of constitutional freedom and the
rule of law.

Questioning
Conventional Wisdom

Justly
celebrated for those pioneering contributions, he deserves recognition for a
different kind of courage, too. Having risen through the most established
institutions, from Horace Mann to Harvard to the Times, Lewis never hesitated to stake out positions that placed him
outside the so-called mainstream, always well ahead of his peers. Indeed, he
fearlessly contradicted the editorial judgments of the Times itself—knowing full well that such apostasies were not
without peril.

Almost
40 years ago, Lewis dared to question the wisdom of the Times on a matter that the paper's publisher and editors considered
of vital importance to the future of New York City—the construction of a
300-acre landfill in the Hudson River with a submerged six-lane highway, all at
a cost of roughly $6 billion. This was the Westway project, a wildly expensive
and irresponsible dream of bankers, politicians, developers, construction
unions—and the Times, which really
ought to have known better.

Clashing
repeatedly with the paper's support of this mad project, Lewis continually
urged the city and state to trade in its federal funding for mass-transit
money. (His fellow Times op-ed
columnist, Sydney Schanberg, still believes that the editors sacked him for
opposing Westway.) In this early confrontation between sound energy policy and
absurd waste, he sided with the embattled and outspent environmentalists.
Eventually a federal court vindicated Lewis' sage advice when it forced the
city to abandon Westway over its ruinous impact on marine life.

During
the next editorial regime at the Times,
Lewis defied a different brand of groupthink that had seized both the news and
editorial pages. Rooted in the paper's breathless coverage of Whitewater and
other non-scandals, a virulent form of Clinton Derangement Syndrome had
infected the paper's investigative reporting staff, most of its columnists, its
top editors and its editorial board.

The
vituperative tone and persistent bias in the paper's coverage of both Bill and
Hillary Clinton were appalling to Lewis, who didn't hesitate to voice an
alternative view that not only his immediate colleagues but almost the entire
national press corps openly disdained. He didn't much care, as he told me more
than once, because he believed that the endless, fruitless, harassing
investigations of the Clintons were wrong and damaging. In that instance, too,
he was thoroughly vindicated.

Neither
of those episodes nor others like them was noted in the affectionate and
laudatory obituary published by the Times
to mark his passing. Yet Lewis ought to be remembered as someone who honored
its old slogan, "without fear or favor," even when that commitment
severely embarrassed and irritated his bosses.